The giant million dollar spec sale that was supposed to star Chris Pratt and, then wife, Anna Faris
Genre: Comedy
Premise: An uptight couple go on a tropical vacation where they befriend a crazy couple who likes them so much that they show up uninvited at their wedding six months later.
About: This script sold in 2014 for a 7 figure check with Chris Pratt and Anna Faris attached and was supposed to be one of the biggest movies of 2015. Poor production house that bought this. It’s not often that you have a divorce derail your movie. But they picked up the pieces and still managed to put a movie together, with John Cena taking Pratt’s role. The movie’s already been shot and is now in post-production. It should be released later this year.
Writers: Tom & Tim Mullen
Details: 2013 draft (I’m assuming they rewrote a lot of this after Pratt left the project)
There’s always speculation around why a script sold for a lot of money. Is it because the script is amazing and unlike anything else out there? Or is it the actor you’ve attached that’s really bringing in the dough? Or, third option, is the script so good that it was able to nab the big actor, which furthermore, justified why it sold for so much money? The only people who know are the ones who bought the script. The rest of us can only speculate. But that’s what’s so fun about Scriptshadow. I can usually rule in favor of if it was the script. Which is what I’m hoping to do today.
Mark Hickman and his girlfriend, Emily Conway, are vacationing in Los Cabos for the week. What Emily doesn’t know is that Mark is planning to propose to her. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Mark knows, once he makes this move, he’s going to be a corporate stooge for the rest of his life, abandoning his dream of starting a tech company.
Right as Mark is about to propose at lunch, Ron Massey and his wife, Kyla, show up. Ron Massey is basically Danny McBride, and Kyla is every hot white trash girl you’ve ever met mixed into one. Here’s a teary-eyed Ron as he looks out at the ocean for the first time: “I’m fine. The ocean gets me, you know? We used to live in her. And then millions of years ago, one of us was brave enough to crawl out on land. Like a shrimpy little astronaut. Now here we are. Free. Upright. I can’t help but think the ocean is damn proud of us.”
Ron and Kyla act as the devil on Mark and Emily’s shoulders, getting them to do shots, then coke, then hallucinogens, then everything else you can imagine. Ron and Kyla even inspire Mark and Emily to get married right there on the island. And they do! But that’s not the culmination of their vacation by any means. Their one week frenzy ends with a drunken foursome! As far as Mark knows, everybody in that foursome stayed on their sides. But he’s about to find out that that may not be the case.
That’s because six months later, Mark and Emily are back to their stiff lame selves. They’re getting married on Emily’s rich dad’s ranch. And who should show up to the festivities? Ron and Kayla! The two were riding by and read in the local paper that Mark and Emily were getting married (again) and how could they not come to their best friends’ wedding?? Oh, and they’re carrying a surprise. Kyla is pregnant. Exactly SIX MONTHS pregnant
Mark, of course, freaks out. If anybody at this upscale party even gets a whiff of Crazy Ron, they’re going to go apeshit. So Mark puts it upon himself to babysit Ron the whole time, keeping him away from the main activities. But that plan goes south when Ron forces Mark to do mushrooms with him. Within four hours, Mark finds himself in front of the entire wedding party rolling in the grass without any pants or underwear on.
As Mark and Emily do damage control, they realize that Ron and Kyla aren’t going away any time soon, which means they’re going to have to manage them the entire wedding procession, a job that becomes a lot more difficult once Mark starts having flashbacks of repressed memories from their Los Cabos vacation – specifically that there was some extracurricular activity going on, and that he may have had sex with Kyla.
Ahhhhh!!!
This one started out so strong!
I loved the first 20 pages, specifically how the writers structured it.
A guy is vacationing with his girlfriend who he’s going to propose to, and the writers do what I told you guys to do Monday – they throw a bunch of obstacles at the hero to prevent him from achieving his objective.
First, Ron and Kyla introduce themselves at lunch right before Mark can propose to Emily. Then Ron and Kyla ask if they can switch tables with Mark and Kyla cause they need to use the outlet next to their table to charge their phone. Then, when the waiter comes with the engagement ring, he of course delivers it to the table he’s been told to deliver it to, which is the one Mark and Emily *used* to be at, forcing Mark into a 4-alarm fire to prevent Emily from realizing what’s going on. This whole sequence was really well crafted.
Everything was set for a fun movie about a couple who has a crazy night out on vacation with another couple, and then the other couple won’t leave them alone for the rest of the vacation. Comedy gold!
So when we started sprinting through a rest-of-the-vacation montage in the first act, I got worried. However, they redeemed themselves with a great climax (literally), which left the potential for some fun story threads later on.
But when we jump six months later with Mark and Emily getting married (officially) and Ron and Kyla showing up at their wedding unannounced, I let out a big ‘uh oh.’ Look, I’m lenient when it comes to logic issues in comedies. But the one area you can’t mess around is the set up. The set up SETS UP the rest of the story. So if it’s shaky, the rest of the movie is shaky.
I couldn’t buy into Ron and Emily showing up unannounced. I know they’re clueless but if there’s a universal rule that everybody knows, it’s not to show up at a wedding you haven’t been invited to. So that bothered me.
However, I was able to get over it, and the writers did bring in a fun plot development I was curious about. Kyla is six months pregnant. It’s been six months since their vacation. Could it be that Mark is the father of Kyla’s child?
But then things really go off the rails. It becomes the “Ron Show.” And while Ron is the funniest character in the movie, he didn’t work as well in the wedding as he did the vacation. One of my big beliefs is that you lean into what’s unique about your premise. That’s how you make yourself different from all the other movies. How many movies have taken place during weddings? Like a billion. Your script is even titled, “Vacation Friends.” Why not just keep this whole movie on the vacation? If you would’ve done that, you would’ve had the movie “The Wrong Missy” should’ve been.
Also, comedy works best when the thing that’s at stake truly means something to your characters. If the characters don’t really give a shit, any comedy you try and build around that storyline won’t work. For example, one of the ongoing threads in Vacation Friends is that Mark and Emily are pretending like this wedding they’re doing isn’t real so as to not upset Ron and Kayla, who believe that the wedding they had back on the island was the real one.
But who cares if they find out? What’s going to happen? Ron’s going to say, “Wait, this wedding is real?” “Yes.” “Oh, why didn’t you tell me when I first got here? Let’s go get wasted!” There are zero consequences attached to Ron finding out. Meanwhile, you’re building these elaborate ‘near-miss’ jokes where Ron almost finds out that this is a real wedding. But we don’t laugh because we know that Ron finding out doesn’t matter.
Let me give you a comparison wedding movie that got it right – Meet The Parents. In that movie, Greg loses Robert DeNiro’s beloved cat, Jinx. The movie spent 60 minutes building up how much DeNiro loved his cat. So when Greg loses Jinx and has to cover it up, we’re laughing our asses off because we know he’s in deep shit. Greg goes to a vet and gets a cat that sort of looks like Jinx to trick DeNiro. When he shows up with that cat, we’re both terrified and laughing at the same time because we know how screwed Greg is if DeNiro figures it out.
This was an unfortunate misfire because it had a lot of things going for it. In comedies, you need at least one hilarious character and they had that in Ron. But I think they made an error in moving the story away from the vacation. That was my favorite stuff.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The comedy combination of a strait-laced character and a reckless character is as old as comedy itself. Your job is to look for ways to freshen it up and the Mullens did a great job of this. They extended the strait-laced character to a straight-laced couple and extended the reckless character to a reckless couple. That’s the biggest thing this script did right, and it resulted in a lot of funny moments.
